CHAPTER II
THE AMAZON
The dog darted into the bunch grass and turned sharply to the right.One of the men followed it, the others took different directions.
Up a gully the hound ran, nosed the ground in a circle of sniffs, anddipped down into a dry watercourse. Tom Morse was at heel scarcely adozen strides behind.
The yelping of the dog told Morse they were close on their quarry.Once or twice he thought he made out the vague outline of a flyingfigure, but in the night shadows it was lost again almost at once.
They breasted the long slope of a low hill and took the declinebeyond. The young plainsman had the legs and the wind of a Marathonrunner. His was the perfect physical fitness of one who lives a clean,hard life in the dry air of the high lands. The swiftness and theendurance of the fugitive told him that he was in the wake of youthtrained to a fine edge.
Unexpectedly, in the deeper darkness of a small ravine below the hillspur, the hunted turned upon the hunter. Morse caught the gleam of aknife thrust as he plunged. It was too late to check his dive. A flameof fire scorched through his forearm. The two went down together,rolling over and over as they struggled.
Startled, Morse loosened his grip. He had discovered by the feel ofthe flesh he was handling so roughly that it was a woman with whom hewas fighting.
She took advantage of his hesitation to shake free and roll away.
They faced each other on their feet. The man was amazed at the youngAmazon's fury. Her eyes were like live coals, flashing at him hatredand defiance. Beneath the skin smock she wore, her breath cameraggedly and deeply. Neither of them spoke, but her gaze did not yielda thousandth part of an inch to his.
The girl darted for the knife she had dropped. Morse was upon herinstantly. She tried to trip him, but when they struck the ground shewas underneath.
He struggled to pin down her arms, but she fought with a barbaricfury. Her hard little fist beat upon his face a dozen times before hepegged it down.
Lithe as a panther, her body twisted beneath his. Too late the flashof white teeth warned him. She bit into his arm with the abandon of asavage.
"You little devil!" he cried between set teeth.
He flung away any scruples he might have had and pinned fast herflying arms. The slim, muscular body still writhed in vain contortionstill he clamped it fast between knees from which not even an untamedcayuse could free itself.
She gave up struggling. They glared at each other, panting from theirexertions. Her eyes still flamed defiance, but back of it he readfear, a horrified and paralyzing terror. To the white traders alongthe border a half-breed girl was a squaw, and a squaw was propertyjust as a horse or a dog was.
For the first time she spoke, and in English. Her voice camebell-clear and not in the guttural of the tribes.
"Let me up!" It was an imperative, urgent, threatening.
He still held her in the vice, his face close to her flaming eyes."You little devil," he said again.
"Let me up!" she repeated wildly. "Let me up, I tell you."
"Like blazes I will. You're through biting and knifing me for onenight." He had tasted no liquor all day, but there was the note ofdrunkenness in his voice.
The terror in her grew. "If you don't let me up--"
"You'll do what?" he jeered.
Her furious upheaval took him by surprise. She had unseated him andwas scrambling to her feet before he had her by the shoulders.
The girl ducked her head in an effort to wrench free. She could aseasily have escaped from steel cuffs as from the grip of his brownfingers.
"You'd better let me go!" she cried. "You don't know who I am."
"Nor care," he flung back. "You're a nitchie, and you smashed ourkegs. That's enough for me."
"I'm no such thing a nitchie[1]," she denied indignantly.
[Footnote 1: In the vernacular of the Northwest Indians were"nitchies." (W.M.R.)]
The instinct of self-preservation was moving in her. She had playedinto the hands of this man and his companions. The traders made theirown laws and set their own standards. The value of a squaw of theBlackfeet was no more than that of the liquor she had destroyed. Itwould be in character for them to keep her as a chattel captured inwar.
"The daughter of a squaw-man then," he said, and there was in hisvoice the contempt of the white man for the half-breed.
"I'm Jessie McRae," she said proudly.
Among the Indians she went by her tribal name of Sleeping Dawn, butalways with the whites she used the one her adopted father had givenher. It increased their respect for her. Just now she was in desperateneed of every ounce that would weigh in the scales.
"Daughter of Angus McRae?" he asked, astonished.
"Yes."
"His woman's a Cree?"
"His wife is," the girl corrected.
"What you doin' here?"
"Father's camp is near. He's hunting hides."
"Did he send you to smash our whiskey-barrels?"
"Angus McRae never hides behind a woman," she said, her chin up.
That was true. Morse knew it, though he had never met McRae. Hisreputation had gone all over the Northland as a fearless fighting manhonest as daylight and stern as the Day of Judgment. If this girl wasa daughter of the old Scot, not even a whiskey-trader could safely layhands on her. For back of Angus was a group of buffalo-hunters relatedto him by blood over whom he held half-patriarchal sway.
"Why did you do it?" Morse demanded.
The question struck a spark of spirit from her. "Because you'reruining my people--destroying them with your fire-water."
He was taken wholly by surprise. "Do you mean you destroyed ourproperty for that reason?"
She nodded, sullenly.
"But we don't trade with the Crees," he persisted.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that she was of theBlackfoot tribe and not of the Crees, but again for reasons of policyshe was less than candid. Till she was safely out of the woods, it wasbetter this man should not know she was only an adopted daughter ofAngus McRae. She offered another reason, and with a flare of passionwhich he was to learn as a characteristic of her.
"You make trouble for my brother Fergus. He shot Akokotos (ManyHorses) in the leg when the fire-water burned in him. He was stabbedby a Piegan brave who did not know what he was doing. Fergus is good.He minds his own business. But you steal away his brains. Then he runswild. It was _you_, not Fergus, that shot Akokotos. The Great Spiritknows you whiskey-traders, and not my poor people who destroy eachother, are the real murderers."
Her logic was feminine and personal, from his viewpoint wholly unfair.Moreover, one of her charges did not happen to be literally true.
"We never sold whiskey to your brother--not our outfit. It wasJackson's, maybe. Anyhow, nobody made him buy it. He was free to takeit or leave it."
"A wolf doesn't have to eat the poisoned meat in a trap, but it eatsand dies," she retorted swiftly and bitterly.
Adroitly she had put him on the defensive. Her words had the sting ofbarbed darts.
"We're not talking of wolves."
"No, but of Blackfeet and Bloods and Sarcees," she burst out, againwith that flare of feminine ferocity so out of character in an Indianwoman or the daughter of one. "D'you think I don't know how youAmericans talk? A good Indian is a dead Indian. No wonder we hate youall. No wonder the tribes fight you to the death."
He had no answer for this. It was true. He had been brought up in aland of Indian wars and he had accepted without question the commonview that the Sioux, the Crows, and the Cheyennes, with all theirblood brothers, were menaces to civilization. The case for the nativeshe had never studied. How great a part broken pledges and callousinjustice had done to drive the tribes to the war-path he did notknow. Few of the actual frontiersmen were aware of the wrongs of thered men.
The young man's hands fell from her arms. Hard-eyed and grim, helooked her over from head to foot. The short skirt and smock ofbuckskin, the moccasins of buffalo
hide, all dusty and travel-stained,told of life in a primitive country under the simplest and hardestconditions.
Yet the voice was clear and vibrant, the words well enunciated. Shebloomed like a desert rose, had some quality of vital life that strucka spark from his imagination.
What manner of girl was she? Not by any possibility would she fit intothe specifications of the cubby-hole his mind had built for Indianwomen. The daughters even of the boisbrules had much of the heavinessand stolidity of their native mothers. Jessie McRae was graceful as afawn. Every turn of the dark head, every lift of the hand, expressedspirit and verve. She must, he thought, have inherited almost whollyfrom her father, though in her lissom youth he could find little ofMcRae's heavy solidity of mind and body.
"Your brother is of the metis[2]. He's not a tribesman. And he's nochild. He can look out for himself," Morse said at last.
[Footnote 2: The half-breeds were known as "metis." The word means, ofcourse, mongrel. (W.M.R.)]
His choice of a word was unfortunate. It applied as much to her as toFergus. Often it was used contemptuously.
"Yes, and the metis doesn't matter," she cried, with the note ofbitterness that sat so strangely on her hot-blooded, vital youth. "Youcan ride over him as though you're lords of the barren lands. You canruin him for the money you make, even if he's a subject of the GreatMother and not of your country. He's only a breed--a mongrel."
He was a man of action. He brushed aside discussion. "We'll be movin'back to camp."
Instantly her eyes betrayed the fear she would not put into words."No--no! I won't go."
His lids narrowed. The outthrust of his lean jaw left no room forargument. "You'll go where I say."
She knew it would be that way, if he dragged her by the hair of thehead. Because she was in such evil case she tamed her pride to sullenpleading.
"Don't take me there! Let me go to father. He'll horsewhip me. I'llhave him do it for you. Isn't that enough? Won't that satisfy you?"
Red spots smoldered like fire in his brown eyes. If he took her backto the traders' camp, he would have to fight Bully West for her. Thatwas certain. All sorts of complications would rise. There would betrouble with McRae. The trade with the Indians of his uncle's firm, ofwhich he was soon to be a partner, would be wrecked by the Scotchman.No, he couldn't take her back to the camp in the coulee. There was toomuch at stake.
"Suits me. I'll take you up on that. He's to horsewhip you for thatfool trick you played on us and to make good our loss. Where's hiscamp?"
From the distance of a stone-throw a heavy, raucous voice called,"'Lo, Morse!"
The young man turned to the girl, his lips set in a thin, hard line."Bully West. The dog's gone back and is bringin' him here, I reckon.Like to meet him?"
She knew the reputation of Bully West, notorious as a brawler anda libertine. Who in all the North did not know of it? Her heartfluttered a signal of despair.
"I--I can get away yet--up the valley," she said in a whisper, eyesquick with fear.
He smiled grimly. "You mean _we_ can."
"Yes."
"Hit the trail."
She turned and led the way into the darkness.
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